Page 33 of The Challenger

“You can’t understand it,” I interrupt. “All the complexity.”

She leans back with a cool stare. “Try me.”

I have no interest in an argument neither of us can win, but a good old-fashioned example never hurt to set things straight.

“Have you ever walked into one of those fancy furniture stores on Melrose and the sales guy looks you up and down like the two of you shouldn’t even be breathing the same air? I get pulled over by cops all the time who say I’m speeding when they can’t handle the fact that a brown boy is driving a nicer car than they ever will. Because that’s how they see me. Brown. Not American. So, you know what? When I win a Grand Slam, I’m winning as an American.”

The uptight businessman sitting across from me clears his throat. He and his white buddy pounded drinks in the airport lounge at LAX, throwing looks at me and Flynn. Guaranteed their gardeners and maids look like me and do nothing but smile and say,Yes, sir.

"I can see where your father is coming from,” Flynn says, diplomatically. “You could be a role model and an ambassador for the sport. You might inspire more kids to pick up the game in Mexico.”

She’s trying to walk me off the ledge, but something about how rational she sounds only adds fuel to my fire.

“The only thing Mexico has given me is brown skin and an uphill battle to overcome that, all right? I don’t need to return any favors. And most of the kids there are into pádel now. Paddle tennis,” I clarify. “Like that’s a real sport.”

After a long silence, her eyes never leaving mine, she asks, “I guess it’s not a good time to ask who Earl is?”

My right leg starts to shimmy out of control. Flynn witnessed my rage when Carmelita threw his name in my face, but I don’t want to talk about him because that hijo de puta deserves free press. Seven months ago, Earl Anderson shat back into my life like the human skid mark he is, and I’m lucky not to be in jail. But I will never rest easy until he learns a lesson.

“Nope,” I say. “It’s not a good time.”

Flynn, the smart cookie, puts two and two together and lets sleeping dogs lie. But I feel shitty as she swivels to look at nothing out the window. She didn’t grow up brown in an America that pretends to be color-blind, so she can’t truly understand. But I do appreciate that she’s trying to figure me out. Before she went down for the count, we talked training and strategy for two hours. Because she played, she knows all about the mind fuck. How sometimes you want to cut your head off during a match and stuff it in the towel box just to shut it up. Stopping the eternal voice in my head is the hardest thing, and last year was the closest I got to overcoming it. But then I fell apart at Roland Garros with Earl’s voice haunting me.

Best be keeping your dreams real or have none at all.

King Earl said those fateful words to me on the day Papa brought me to Westar Poultry to show me around. He and Mama worked at Earl’s chicken-killing factory ever since they were eighteen, and they wanted me to follow in their footsteps. But I had heard from other kids that workers had to kiss Earl’s pointy rodeo boots to thank him for the luxury of working in a sweatshop with temperatures hotter than a volcano to get a paycheck that never let them get ahead.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my parents. They got dealt their hand in life, accepted it, and worked their asses off to help me in every way. But I knew one thing growing up—I didn’t want their life.

After a super awkward meet and greet with Earl, Papa went to shoot the shit with his crew, and I’d gotten restless waiting for him in the cafeteria. I decided to snoop around and got lost, ending up in the cool of the offices, where the air smelled like a fake forest instead of ammonia. Curiosity got the better of me when I heard a rowdy bunch of cheers coming from down a hallway. I tiptoed to the boardroom and poked my head around the corner. Earl and his cronies lounged like lions after a kill around the biggest table I’d ever seen, and they were all fixated on the screen hanging from the ceiling. Papa only watchedfutbol,and I’d never seen tennis played live. I was mesmerized. So much that I forgot I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be.

The fattest dude took a pull of his Michelob and caught sight of me. “Who’s this punk?”

Heads swiveled, and a cryptic grin spread on the grizzled roadmap of Earl’s face. “That’s Delgado’s kid. He brought his son in to witness his future.”

They all laughed like it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. My blood turned cold, and I felt sick to my stomach. I knew right then I would never give Earl the satisfaction of witnessing this Delgado punch his timecard. But he clocked my fascination with what unfolded on the TV screen with great interest. He stroked his bolo tie, belly bursting over his belt buckle and boots on the table like a gangster kingpin.

“You wanna know why there are no Mexican tennis players, Chavez?” he said, pronouncing my nameShavezinstead of the right way.

I didn’t know that he was full of shit, that there were Mexican tennis players. One Grand Slam winner, too—Rafael Osuna. But then, in a room full of fat old white men, watching white men play what I believed to be a white man’s sport on TV, I didn’t know any better. I just knew I had to put them in their place.

“I’m not Mexican,” I said, standing taller. “I’m American.”

“Woah,” the bald guy said, his chair creaking as he rocked back and forth. “You gotta feisty one here, Earl.”

A dude with a bushy red beard and pale, cold eyes, sized me up. “You ever look in the mirror, son?”

I sucked up their laughter with fists balled tight and my throat burning with all the words Mama would have smacked me for if I said them out loud. The strange light in Earl’s eyes faded, and they became crafty and unforgiving, like they looked when I met him an hour earlier and he pretended to like Papa. Funny how I could see through people, even back then.

“There’s no Mexican tennis players, kid,” Earl said, “because they’re all cutting up dead chickens. Best be keeping your dreams real, or have none at all.” He popped open a fresh beer with his belt buckle and swilled deeply before belching. A real gentleman. “Now you go find your daddy and run on home. And shut the door while you’re at it. We don’t all live like savages.”

His dissing me was one thing. Inferring my family were savages meant war. My emotions got the better of me, as they often do, and I told him to go fuck himself. They all stared at me like I was the Devil. I bolted out of there with the grim understanding that I had drawn an irreversible line in the sand.

After Papa drove us home, I biked like a hellcat to Walmart with the last of Abuela's Christmas money burning a hole in my pocket. I bought the cheapest tennis racket, pedaled to the public courts near our house, and fished out dead balls from the trash cans with determination in my soul. Month after month, I creamed a thousand balls against a concrete wall and played with anyone who had a pulse. I played every night until the sky darkened, and the court turned invisible. I played like my life depended on it because it did.

I’ve achieved more than I ever thought possible, but it is still not enough.

It will never be enough until I blast my way into the boardroom of that white-trash fuck named Earl with a Grand Slam trophy in my arms so he and all his executive goons can suck my savage dick.

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